Warning: Spoiler Alert
While watching last week’s episode of the new FOX series “Gotham,” a small alarm went off in my brain, when we briefly saw a new character, GCPD Detective Arnold Flass, portrayed by “Ray Donovan,” series regular, Dash Mihok. Adding a well-known actor as a detective, twelve episodes into the series, caused me to think that Flass, would become a central figure of an episode in the near future. The show-runners decided that moment occurred in the following episode, to turn the spotlight on Flass, during a very busy episode of the show.
We watch a man and women in scrubs wheeling a gurney containing a covered body, as they remove the sheet, we realize that the person strapped to the gurney’s gang leader Fish Mooney. As she looked at the faces, of the couple, the realization occurred to her, that this man and woman were strangers to her. She asked if they comprised the “B-Team,” and told that she’d get interrogated by Bob, one of their best.
GCPD Detective Jim Gordon arrives late to a crime scene, his partner Harvey Bullock waiting for him, Jim tells Bullock he’s sorry that things are looking bleak for Fish and he knows his partner has “a thing,” for her, Harvey snaps back the only one he’s got “a thing” for is himself.
Bullock takes Gordon to see the body, saying that the man was the victim, of a “public-service homicide,” as the victim was a lifelong criminal. The body’s suspended from some sort of conveyor-system and Bullock introduces Jim to Narcotics Detective Arnold Flass. He tells Harvey and Gordon that he received a tip from an informant, that the drug-dealer died, the victim of foul play then says he needs to leave as he’s involved in another case, Bullock walks him out of the warehouse.
Jim starts looking at the body and noticed one of his shoe-heels was sideways, he looked in the heel and found some packages of illegal substances. Harvey returns with the crime’s only witness, an elderly night-janitor who agrees to sit down with a sketch artist at the station.
The witness Leon Winkler’s alone in an interrogation room talking to his wife on his cellphone, telling her he’s still at the station. A man wearing a fedora that we see only in silhouette, asks Winkler if the sketch artist arrived yet, Winkler responds they hadn’t and says goodbye to his wife on the phone. The man asks if he could identify the murderer and the man responds yes, at which point the man in silhouette stabs Mr. Winkler with an ice pick, thrusting it twice into his back and Winkler died instantly.
As Bob begins to torture Fish, we watch an SUV drive up with Mooney’s guy Butch Gilzean, bound and gagged in the back. One of the two men in the vehicle, opens the back to find Gilzean’s vanished, he goes to tell the driver, finds him dead at the steering wheel and Gilzean sneaks up behind him, starts strangling the guy and asks where’s Fish.
At the station Captain Sarah Essen screams how can the citizens trust them to keep citizens safe, when they can’t even control their own house. Gordon and Bullock are looking at Leon, while police scientist Ed Nygma, tells the detectives that the witness got killed with an icepick, the same weapon that killed the drug-dealer. Harvey tells them the surveillance cameras got turned off before the killer entered the room, Gordon believes, one of the officers was the murderer. Essen and Bullock tell Gordon not to mention that to others, or he could find himself back at Arkham Asylum. Essen says to Gordon not to make any big moves without clearing it with her first.
After not appearing in the previous two episodes, young Bruce Wayne’s in the back of one of the family’s cars with Alfred Pennyworth at the wheel. Alfred asks why they keep circling the same block and Bruce responds that’s where Selena Kyle hangs out. Alfred stops the car and the boy jumps out, Pennyworth shouting for him to come back, which Wayne does. He asks Alfred if they can take one walk around the block, then head home and Alfred agrees.
As they walk Bruce sees Ivy and calls out to her and the creepy little girl responds, Millionaire Bruce Wayne. Alfred looks at her disgustedly and tells Bruce to stay away from her as she looks like she has the mange. Wayne asks her if she’s seen Cat and the girl responds, she does and when Bruce asks her to deliver a message she sticks out her hand and says twenty-bucks, which Alfred gives the girl.
At “Bob’s House Of Pain,” as he threatens to shatter her knee, Gilzean bursts in and beats the torturer to a pulp, then picks up Fish and gets her out of there.
We return to the station where Jim’s discovered that a page’s missing from the log of which officer guards the interrogation room. Gordon asks a bunch of officers who was at the door when Winkler got murdered, but they all have temporary amnesia. Finally Jim tries some psychology, tells one of the uniforms that another cop named him as the guard on duty and the officer says vehemently it wasn’t him.
When he finds out who allegedly named him, he tells Gordon that he had a thing with the other cop’s wife years before. Gordon comes out and asks where Derek Delaware’s at and one of the cops said he just left. Jim gets to the parking garage just as Delaware starts getting in his car, he tries to drive away, but he’d run over Gordon if he moved another foot. He gets out of his car, gets quickly bettered in the fight with Jim, Gordon puts him in cuffs, then searches the car, finding the same packets in Delaware’s trunk that he found on the dealer.
Jim brings Delaware into the station in cuffs and throws him in a holding cell, staring the officer cops down with a look of righteous indignation on his face. Essen calls Gordon into her office and sitting with her, Arnold Flass, who tells Gordon the drugs he found in Delaware’s trunk are part of a narcotics-sting. Essen says that the narcotics division’s under deep-cover in a lot of major drug-dealers organizations. She chastises him, for moving without checking with her first and says the detective will get released immediately.
Fish wakes-up in a motel room bed as Butch sits in a chair next to her, smiling to see she’s okay. She says she’s starving and Butch breaks up laughing, then tells her they need to leave Gotham City immediately. She tells Butch she’s not leaving until she slices the Penguin’s throat.
Harvey tells Jim that the narcotics division’s corrupt from top to bottom, with many GCPD officers running drug-houses, he says that he kept the info from his partner as they had yet to deal with the division, but the road leads right to the top as even the Commissioner gets a cut. He then calls a buddy on the force and gets some information. The two soon arrive at a drug-house, as Delaware’s packing up all the drugs with two other cops, a brawl breaks out until Delaware shows the pair a warrant to search the facility signed by a judge.
Earlier in the episode Ed Nygma gave his crush Kristen Kringle a greeting card and Flass grabbed it off her desk and reads it to some cops and Kristen and all but Kristen laugh as Nygma walks into the stairwell, they’re gathered in. Flass calls him a perv and tells him to stick to his day-job, Ed replies Rodger-Dodger and Flass calls him a weirdo, while Kringle tells him to stop it. Ed walks away and we can start to see a hint of what he’ll eventually become.
Oswald Cobblepot’s brought his mother to Fish’s club telling her it will soon become his, he’s hired a four piece band and his mother and his bodyguard dance. She gets drunk pretty rapidly and Gordon enters the club asking the Penguin if he’s celebrating early. Cobblepot truly likes and respects Jim, you can see it in his facial expressions, just how happy he is to see him. Penguin and Gordon sit down and Jim says the reason he contacted Oswald was for a favor. There’s some dirty-cops he wants to nail and since Maroni runs the drug-trafficking, he’s hoping Penguin can help resolve things. Cobblepot says done and Jim asks what he’s going to owe him for the favor, Penguin says nothing friends do favors for friends, because it’s fun.
Penguin has his henchman take his mother home, then opens a bottle of champagne and gets rip-roaring drunk, he plays with everything in the club, ending up on the stage with a microphone and greeting his soon to come clientele. Suddenly we hear clapping and Cobblepot turns around to see Butch and Fish, with her carrying a metal baseball bat. Across town at the same moment Falcone’s assassin Victor Zsasz, kills Bob for allowing Mooney to escape.
Bruce’s playing chess by himself in the library, when Cat walks in asks what kind of weirdo plays chess against themselves. He tells her he’s glad to see her, tells her he went to Switzerland for a few weeks then gives her a present, a snow-globe containing a village similar to the one he stayed at. She smiles, then he asks her why doesn’t she move into the mansion. Kyle’s afraid of feelings or attachment so she insults the boy, then says she lied and never saw his parents murder. She then leaves through the window.
Penguin’s henchman has Delaware at gunpoint in the detectives own bathroom. The henchman says he believes him and then we see Delaware’s wife come up for air as the mobster had her under the water in their tub. He then pushes the wife under the water and says he needs something more concrete.
Back at Mooney’s club, Fish has Cobblepot kissing her shoes. He says they can work together and she laughs saying he’s an umbrella boy and she took him in and taught him about the crime-racket, she then tells him he’s a nothing. Penguin responds that this “nothing,” outsmarted her at every move and she wasn’t smart enough to realize he worked for Falcone. Right then Victor Zsasz, with his female assassin team enter the club and starts shooting at Gilzean and Fish, they all leave the club, leaving Penguin alone laughing loudly, that he avoided an extremely bad fate.
Butch and Fish run down a hallway, reach a window with a grate on it that Gilzean pulls off then opens the window, telling Mooney to leave and he’ll hold them off. Seconds after she escapes, Zsasz finds Butch shoots him once, then asks his team if they should kill him or take him home and play with him?
Ed’s angrily picking stuff out of some other substance, when Kringle walks in and asks if he’s busy, he coldly responds he is, he’s dissecting onions from his food. She tells Nygma that Flass took the card off her desk and was teasing her by reading it to the guys. She says she thought the gesture was very thoughtful, then walks away, Ed’s ecstatic, saying out loud there’s still hope.
Gordon’s sitting at his desk when Penguin’s henchman puts a brown paper bag with the murder weapon and Delaware on cassette implicating Flass. Gordon then goes up to Flass and tells him he’s under arrest and Arnold responds keep walking mutt, you’ve got nothing. Jim dumps the bags contents on a desk, the bloody icepick and the cassette, says this ought to get you 20-30 upstate.
Arnold asks if he really thinks his boys will allow Gordon to arrest him? This is his house and Gordon quickly corrects him, he’s a drug-dealer and murderer, this is NOT his house. Gordon then tells the entire squad-room about all the crimes Arnold’s committed and the cops start supporting Gordon. Flass starts to respond when Essen says shut-up Flass and tells him he’s under arrest.
Gordon’s about to head home when Delaware asks if he got the package and please leave his wife and kids out of this. Jim asks him what he’s talking about and Delaware, gets on his knees, begging Gordon to leave his wife and kids alone and it suddenly sinks in, that’s how the henchman got the info. He looks like he’s about to get sick as the episode concludes.
The Story Continues Next Monday Night at 9:00 pm on FOX.
